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Posts Tagged ‘hand’

Re-Seeing (and gone for a few days)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 5, 2026| 11 Comments »

Re-Seeing
 
 
This morning I saw my hand and marveled—
the smoothness of the finger pads
like sandstone eroded by centuries of wind,
the wrinkled cords between the pointer
and the thumb like cottonwood roots rising
out of the ground, the fine wrinkles in the knuckles
like thin braided strands of spider silk, 
the splotchy spots of white below the plush heel,
like small puffs of morning clouds in the desert.
This hand that has held weeping children 
and planted beets, scraped cat vomit from the carpet 
and carried river stones to build a home. I stared 
at this hand I have known my whole life and wept
for the sheer miracle of hand, how even the most 
familiar, intimate parts of ourselves, the parts we take
most for granted, have the most to teach us about 
gratefulness, about how to see and meet the world. 


—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

*

Hey friends, I will be away for four days, teaching remotely in the glorious San Juans at High Camp Hut with no cell, no wifi, and lots of spaciousness. I’ll be back with poems on Sunday night. In the meantime, if you are jonesing for poems, you can find them on my blog (a backlog of poems from the last 12 years or so): A Hundred Falling Veils. 

Or, you can subscribe to the Ritual app on your phone and there I read a poem every day (twice!) and offer ways to think about it and also optional writing invitations. You can find that on your phone here (there is a small fee to subscribe): The Poetic Path

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You, the Light

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 10, 2025| 7 Comments »

 
 
I thought the way
to hold you
was by folding
myself around you,
gentle but tight,
the way the hand
wraps around pebble,
acorn, coin,
and now that
you’re not here,
the love no less great,
I stand outside
with my empty,
upturned hands
and understand
opening them
is the only way
to hold light.

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Beyond Sight

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 26, 2024| 5 Comments »


 
 
All around me, the world
was normal—people eating dinner
or walking down the street—
but my world?
Some massive, invisible hand
kept capturing me, then
tossing me into the air.
And I’d somersault
and fall and be caught,
then placed upright again
on the ground. All night
it went on like this.
I’d be walking and then
I’d be flying and then
I’d be falling and then
I’d be caught, until finally,
by morning, we couldn’t say
that it wasn’t disconcerting,
but we could say I
had become more fluent
in this strange upheaval.
We could say I
had begun to trust
the same hand that tossed me
would catch me.
We could say that when
I woke up, I was still myself
and nothing felt the same.
And though my feet
never left the ground today,
I was tossed.
And then I was caught.
Even now, I almost feel them
around my chest,
those great fingers
as they set me on my feet again.

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One Walking Home in the Dark

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 2, 2022| 1 Comment »



            with a nod to Basho
 
 
my teenage girl
slips her hand into mine—
from the hand, I learn about hands

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Biomechanical Creature

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 4, 2021| 4 Comments »


 
 
Anything can be a holy path, says Kayleen,
and I begin to trace the outline of my left hand
with my right index finger, following
the familiar shape, surprised
at how intimate it is, this tiny tactile journey
 
of wrinkles and knuckles, fingers and thumb—
I close my eyes and my finger continues
to slowly travel the tips and webs, rises
and vees, a labyrinth of skin and nail
I navigate through touch.
 
How many years have I avoided knowing
myself as holy? How many days
have I desecrated this temple of flesh
and breath with belittling thoughts?
How many hours have I resisted the pleasure
 
I feel now as I explore this fleeting path,
this haptic trail steeped in awe?
Perhaps science could explain away
this divine excursion as nothing more
than a series of electrical impulses
 
moving at eighty feet per second
through my neural infrastructure,
but somehow knowing how the body works
makes this gentle path I choose today
even more oh! more holy.
 
 
 
*quote from Kayleen Asbo in “Blessing Thread: Wales and Ireland,” an online class
 
 

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Look at Your Hand, Love

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 23, 2019| 4 Comments »

Before you were born,

your hand had more muscles,

for instance the dorsometacarpales,

a reptilian remnant, an atavistic relic

from when all blood was cold blooded.

By the time you were thirteen weeks

in utero, a third of the muscles

in your hands and feet had fused

with other muscles. Your body

simply deleted them, proof

that before we are born,

before we are ready

to inhabit our forms,

we are in some ways

made less complex.

I think of this now as I open my hand

for your hand, think

of how much things change.

How once we had fins, then claws.

And now, look at us,

with hands that might caress,

might soothe, might reach.

God, this impulse to be warm.

And I think of how sometimes,

growth means to become more simple.

This is my prayer. To do

what the nascent body can do:

to remember where I came from,

to streamline, to know what is needed,

to know what to let go.

https://earthsky.org/human-world/Evolutionary-remnants-muscles-human-embryos

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Spiraling Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 14, 2012| 2 Comments »

here, darling, here
is my so open hand, waiting
for you to write
a thousand secrets, your tears,
your scent, your hum the ink

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